Intel investigating mind reading phones

Chipzilla's top boffin Justin Rattner, has been showing off a new form of "context-aware computing" which he thinks is becoming more of a reality with the rise of mobile gear. The idea is that the devices could be doing things with that data such as predicting what you might do next and offering suggestions.

According to AP, he showed off a prototype application Intel worked on with Fodor's Travel. It learns what types of foods you like to eat and what types of attractions you like to visit, based on searches you type into the phone or locations identified using GPS.

He said that the challenge is to training computers to analyse data from "hard sensors" which measure location, motion, voice patterns, and temperature and the like. You then combine these with data from "soft sensors" such as calendar appointments and web browsing history and divide by your shoe size.

This will give your mobile the appearance that it knows what you will want for dinner or watch on TV. Of course this would be a brilliant thing for a hacker to target.